


There Is No Selection Process

by Skulled



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Don't Examine This Too Closely, Gen, I Don't Even Know, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-09
Updated: 2017-11-09
Packaged: 2019-01-31 07:01:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12676776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skulled/pseuds/Skulled
Summary: The change happens gradually and Joker doesn´t acknowledge it until it´s done.





	There Is No Selection Process

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place at no particular point in P5. (Though there might be very slight spoilers? Idk)

There is no indication of anything being different when Joker steps out into the light of the real world instead of Kurusu Akira after one of the Phantom Thieves regular trips to Mementos.

There never is. He has been one with the shadows for a long time and they rarely like to give him up. His masks keep him company and they stay close to him, even when he isn´t in a palace or the collective unconscious.

His friends grow cautious around him. They notice that something isn´t right, but he can never tell them what. They keep asking if he feels alright.

Ryuji tries dragging him to training, to the arcade or just to hang out with him, trying to keep him from fading into the background. Complaining how they rarely get to talk with school getting in the way.

Ann asks him to join her for shopping and other activities, asks him to come keep her company at her part time job, buying him ice cream and unhealthy snacks and telling him to just enjoy the food even if he insists that he isn´t hungry.

Morgana´s eyes pierce through him, as if to pin him to the reality the cat sees. Mona insists on sleeping on top of his chest, no matter how much he complains about not being able to breathe well whenever he does that. The cat anchors his claws in his shirt and does it anyway.

Kawakami doesn´t call him out for sleeping in class, but unlike the other teachers who don´t acknowledge him at all, she looks worried when she does notice.

People in the street start registering his presence less. They look around as if they haven´t seen who they just bumped into. He apologizes, but they can´t hear him.

Sojiro startles sometimes when Joker leaves the café, seemingly needing to remind himself that there is somebody living in his attic.

His eyes sometimes flash golden, the other Phantom Thieves tell him.

When he starts wearing black and velvet blue, it is a subconscious decision that he only realises after Ann calls him out on it more than once while she drags him on one of her shopping sprees.

Makoto thinks he doesn´t notice that she has been spending a lot of time in the library, looking through books on psychology and anything that resembles info on the Metaverse that she can get her hands on. Her and Futaba spend days trying to get their hands on the government´s cognitive pscience papers and deciphering them afterwards.

Standing next to him, Haru wonders out loud who is tending to her rooftop garden in her absence. The other Phantom Thieves have to remind her that she usually shares the responsibility with Joker.

His confidants stop asking him for help and when he goes to see why, they don´t recognize him for the first few minutes.

Sometimes, he thinks he´s seethrough. Transparent.

He can see the other world waiting for him in the shadows of the one he is in now. He goes there more often, alone and with his friends. The other world feels right to him now. It is different from what he has come to expect of it.

The real world is the one that is starting to feel fake.

He sees Goemon looking over Yuusuke´s shoulder whenever he paints, the whole team assembled at his new rented studio. He has tried coaxing some artistic talent out of Joker too, to change up his schedule, but he isn´t really interested.

Johanna´s mask on Makoto as she smiles at him, though now sometimes with apprehension. Captain Kidd´s mask on Ryuji´s face, natural as if it had always been there. The first time he saw Necronomicons´s mask on Futaba´s face in the real world, he had thought she had made a cosplay of herself and she had looked at him funny when he had asked about it.

He can feel the markings of his own mask etching themselves deeper into the flesh around his eyes and he thinks it should probably hurt. It doesn´t.

They will miss him, he knows.

But he is already becoming less and less real to them.  

They aren´t guests.

And when the twins stop being twins a few months later, they come to take him with them and show him Igor´s vacated seat, rip off his mask, call him Victor, brother – he knows this is how it should be.

**Author's Note:**

> I have had a ton of unfinished P5 fics lying around for the past few months, but this is the first one that got finished. The style is very vague and info-dumpy which is a habit I want to get out of but can´t help writing in, which makes me consider this a draft, but I hope it came out well enough anyways. Criticism is always appreciated! (especially since English isn´t my native language, but who cares nowadays)


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